Perhaps, you’ve been working with WordPress long enough that you’re ready to make a move. You’ve learned the ins and outs of Flash and you’re so good at Illustrator that it’s unbelievable! Those programs are really fun once you get the hang of it, and they are essential to web development.

But, if you are looking to take the leap to becoming a professional web designer, you have to start viewing this as a business. With that comes the most important part of a business, the pricing.

There are not exact or easy answers to how much you should charge for a particular design or project, but there are some factors you can take into consideration that will help you determine a good price.

One factor is the time factor. How long does it normally take you to complete a project? More specifically, how long would it take you to complete this certain project? If you’ve never logged your time, all you can do is estimate, so it might be a good idea to make a project for yourself and detail how long it took you to do what.

As a web designer and developer, many juggle more than one project at a time, which is another factor to take into consideration. Let’s say you’ve begun a project but have to stop because you need information from the client before proceeding any further. You shoot them an email, and start working on a different project in the meantime. Then they reply and want to speak on the phone, so you’re caught up in a conversation for several minutes. Here, it is difficult to determine how much time you spent on which project, but that’s just what you have to do. Log all the time, and each time, you worked on a project. You have to keep track of them all. More or less, this will become a habit and you’ll be able to see how much time you spend normally on things.

You may be thinking, “but why bother doing that?”

Here’s why: Someone may be willing to give you $500 for a web design project. However, if you spend 70 hours on this particular project, that $500 wouldn’t cover it. You would be quite sad to find out that equaled to about 7.5 cents per hour. However, if it only took you 5 hours to complete, you’d be making $100 an hour.

To be able to correctly get the right amount of money your project is worth, you have to track your time and know how long it takes you to do the simple things as well as the difficult tasks.

There are many ways to keep up with your time from creating an excel sheet to downloading time management tools and clocks via the Internet. Whatever you choose to do, keep the date, hours worked, exclude your lunch or other breaks and keep tracking. Sometimes you may only be logging certain minutes, but at the completion of a project, add them up to see your time spent.

After you’ve done this for a project, you’ll be able to properly estimate future projects, which will help you to determine an appropriate price for your services.

The whole western world seems to be outsourcing everything to the developing nations but is it a good idea for Website development?

Firstly, let us look at some facts – taking India as an example.

* India has 1 billion inhabitants

* The Indian culture has a very strong work ethic

* The cost of living in India is very low compared to the developed nations

* India has very strong family ties

* India has a very good education system in the cities

In the past many Indians would leave their country in the hope of finding a better standard of living abroad. While many have succeeded, the vast majority of educated Indians have had to accept less intellectually stimulating jobs.

Outsourced Development

Improved telecommunications and technology have now given a large number of people the opportunity to stay in their home country and maintain a decent standard of living.

However, the vast number of inhabitants causes the demand for these outsourced website design and development positions to be very high – with the result that a person is likely to be more highly qualified in India for the same position than a person in the developed world.

So what does this mean to the Web Development market for IT outsourcing:

* Large number of highly skilled, motivated staff

* Much lower overheads than the developed world

* Time difference is excellent for support

However, if anyone thinks that an India web development company can simply send a form to a customer for them to complete with their website requirements and build a perfect website – they will be in a very bad surprise in all but the simplest of cases.

Web design is not like buying a microwave oven. The customer will have a very clear idea what they are trying to achieve but communicating these thoughts in black and white to someone 12000 miles away is no easy matter.

Ciudad de Panama Website Business Analysis

This is where the local IT Business Analyst is so important. Their role is three fold:

* Understand exactly what the customer requires and write it down in a manner that the Website Developer can understand

* Act as the intermediary throughout the development process, conducting regular reviews, using the Internet, at key milestones to ensure that the project is on track

* After the development is complete, the BA provide assistance to the customer in testing, migrating and implementing the new website.

We believe that website development outsourcing is a good idea as the cost savings will be large but only if the correct infrastructure is in place – otherwise you, the customer, will be severely disappointed when you get delivered a microwave oven when you thought you had ordered a grill…

Web design is all about creating an attractive and user-friendly website. It mainly focuses on the look and feel of a certain website. Anyone who is into e-commerce or into internet business knows that a website’s interface is one of the most important tool that could draw in clients and customers.

Even before they discover what you really offer, the website would be the first thing they see. It is a make or break moment. It is either they find your site helpful and actually go on and read through the site, or it bores them to death that they leave at first glance. It doesn’t have to scream at your face. But it is a fact that poor content, usability and difficult navigation contributes to a high bounce rate. It is therefore essential to invest in high quality Web Design. Most companies outsource people to improve and develop their websites to save money and time since they’re usually project based. Some web designers include web design outsourcing in their package, but majority still focuses on graphic design. The process is not easy as it sounds. They don’t just instantly come up with something. Like any other project, it involves multiple disciplines such as corporate identity, animation, communication design, graphic design, human-computer interaction, photography, search engine optimization, typography, information structure, and interaction design. A balance of these would be a recipe for a sky rocketing conversion rate.

It is important for a web design outsourcing company to work transparently. This is to save their client’s valuable time, so they could utilize it on more important activities. A quality website cannot be created without the client’s brilliant ideas, the designer team’s creativity and imagination, and the programmer’s skills. With all the other companies offering the same service, distinction could change the rule of the game. Successful web design companies cultivate and maintain creative and innovative thinking, personal focus on specific website requirements, professional web developers, outstanding and long term support and competitive pricing. The measurements of a great web design company are these: professional attitude, excellent services, incomparable design, poetic coding and reasonable cost.

In conclusion, it is wise to just outsource any web design needs, because of the time and money you’d be able to save. There are a lot of companies that cater to those needs and offer different scopes of services. One just has to be wise enough to choose their perfect fit. A great web design when correctly implemented will result to a high impact website that could translate to high traffic and higher conversion.